Multi-screen interactive technology refers to operations between different operating systems and different presentation devices. The technology allows the devices to achieve data transmission via wireless connections. A user may simultaneously display contents in different screens and control these screens through intelligent terminals. The operating systems include IOS®, ANDROID®, WIN7®, WINDOWS XP®, VISTA®, etc., and the devices include smart phones, smart tablet, computer, TV. The data information may include HD video, audio, images, documents etc.
There are a number of protocols to support the multi-screen interaction, such as AirPlay®, Digital Living Network Alliance (DLNA), WiPlug, WiDi, Intelligent Grouping & Resource Sharing protocol (IGRS) protocol. Airplay® and DLNA are the most widely used multi-screen techniques.
Airplay® embodies a wireless communication technique developed by Apple®. Airplay® allows users to use licensed speaker docks, AV receivers and stereo systems and other equipment to consume entire iTunes music library wirelessly. ITunes® is a digital media player application for Mac and PC use. It is a free application that can manage and play digital music and video. Airplay® belongs to a proprietary communication protocol to share multimedia data between heterogeneous devices within a local area network (LAN). Airplay® devices have two categories: client terminals and server terminals. The smaller device may be implemented as Airplay® clients and the larger devices may be implemented as Airplay® servers. For example, iPhone®, iPad®, iPod® generally are considered as Airplay® client terminals, while iTV®, Macbook® Airplay® as Airplay® server terminals. Between Airplay® client and server terminals, data such as videos, photos and music are shared. To implement Airplay®, Airplay® service is first released so that IOS® devices can find the service; Airplay® protocol response is then implemented to allow interactive data to be exchanged among IOS® devices.
DLNA is a multi-screen interactive technology resource sharing protocol standard to achieve connectivity between devices as well as to achieve interconnection and interoperability capabilities. DLNA is developed based on the DLNA protocol or IGRS protocol via WI-FI network on different multimedia terminal. For example, intelligent terminals may include mobile phones, tablets etc., which may run operating systems (IOS®, Android®, Windows®, etc.). Among these terminals, multimedia (audio, video, and image) transmission, sharing, data parsing, display, and/or a series of control operations may be performed. DLNA may allow different platforms to share and display contents, enriching multimedia user experience. In these instances, multiple-display devices may be connected, and data may be shared and converted among these devices. For example, movies may be played on a mobile device, a picture on a tablet may be displayed on a TV, and a content of the computer may be projected on the TV.
Accordingly, Airplay® and DLNA based multi-screen technologies are implemented among two devices that are in the same local network and have to adopt the same protocol such as Airplay® or DLNA protocol. Therefore, each of Airplay® and DLNA based multi-screen display technology not only has limited access to a particular display device, but also lack support of remote mobile access to multiple screens in different locations (e.g., different LANs). These techniques have problems to add/remove display devices during data sharing and to display contents among display devices in different locations.